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... if you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.

Sam Altman

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Sam Altman
Age: 39
Born: 1985
Born: April 22
Entrepreneur
Chicago
Illinois
Samuel H. Altman
Samuel Altman
Part
Firsts
Employees
First
Feel
Founding
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One of the great and terrible things about starting a start up is that you get no credit for trying.
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No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.
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If you compromise and hire someone mediocre you will always regret it.
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The second part of how to hire: try not to.
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It's easy to move fast or be obsessed with quality, but the trick is you have to do both at a startup.
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In addition to relentlessly resourceful, you want a tough and a calm cofounder.
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The single word that matters most I think to keep the company productive as it grows is alignment.
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I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees.
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You really want to know your cofounders for a while, ideally years.
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... but actually it sucks to have a lot of employees, and you should be proud of how few employees you have.
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At the beginning, you should only hire when you have a desperate need to.
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Startups are very hard no matter what you do you may as well go after a big opportunity.
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We talk to a team they've gotten new things done, that's the best predictor we have that a company will be successful.
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AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.
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You can have a startup and one other thing, you can have a family, but you probably can't have many other things.
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In general though, if you look at the track record of pivots, they don't become big companies.
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Because so few people make an actual long term commitment to what they're building, the ones that do have a huge advantage.
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One thing that often disrupts momentum and really shouldn't is competitors.
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One thing that founders always underestimate is how hard it is to recruit.
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... how much time you should be spending on hiring? The answer is 0 or 25 percent.
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